Deals on webOS apps, a nice comparison of how the Sprint Palm Pre stacks up against the Sprint HTC Evo 4G, more comings and going at Palm, plus the "Flash" story are just some of the things folks are talkin' about in this edition.

To start, our sister site Android Central posted a very comprehensive comparison of the Sprint Palm Pre and the HTC Evo 4G. This was done by two guys, Craig Froehle and Don Ferguson, who are experts in the Palm OS of old and the webOS of new.

It is well worth the read. They talked a lot about performance: reliability, as a phone, as a generally usable device, for email & messaging, as a PIM, as a replacement device, and how these smartphones handle apps & maintenance.

Here are a few notable quotables:

"At the highest level, the concepts that are built into webOS make for a more globally consistent, transparent operation that is in many ways superior to Android. The three UI elements that give webOS this advantage are 1) the card model which makes what’s running very transparent and also makes open programs easier to get back to, 2) the gesture area, which gives each OS component and application a built-in, consistent way of navigating, and 3) the upper left corner menu (tap or swipe)." -- Don

"Right! webOS is extremely elegant in how it handles multitasking, at least from a user interface perspective. I don’t think anyone argues that there’s a better mobile OS" -- Craig

"Android seems to lean towards powerful, whereas webOS seems to lean towards simple convenience. I can’t say one is more 'elegant' than the other, but there’s definitely a different design ethos influencing each." -- Craig

Palm Pre "Universal Search is far from universal (one still cannot search the calendar, for instance, even after a year), but it’s handy to be able to just start typing something and have the option to find it on the device, in Google, Wikipedia, etc. You just start typing. Very handy" -- Don

"The Pre, limited though it may be in other areas, shows a great deal of thought when it comes to little touches in the user interface. -- Don

" I LOVE Synergy. I have had zero complaints about how it merges records from different sources (e.g., Facebook, Google contacts, LinkedIn, etc) into unified contact profiles. In fact, if I could name one killer feature of webOS, this would be it...it really is stellar." -- Craig

Make sure to read the comparison in its entirety and especially check out the conclusion. It isn't surprising to Pre users. Clearly, HP-Palm has some work to do on the hardware side.

Another Week, Another Exit: Palm’s Temkin Joins AOL As Head Of Mobile. David Temkin, the VP-developer platform for Palm, has left to head mobile for AOL. He will be reporting to Brad Garlinghouse, president of consumer applications, and, like him, will be based in AOL’s Mountain View office.

Elevation Partners taking a Break - According to a story by Adam Lashinsky of FORTUNE, the noise out of Elevation (Partners) is about retrenchment. The firm is cutting "fewer than 10" people, mostly in administrative functions and primarily because it no longer needs extra hands on deck what with HP (HPQ) taking Palm off its hands. Assuming "fewer than 10" means nine, and seeing as Elevation lists 13 administrative people on its website, the cuts are deep.

Flash Disconnect… What's the holdup? - Palm says it has no idea why Adobe hasn't offered any signs of preparing to port Flash to webOS. The strange part of this is that Adobe demonstrated a Flash Player for webOS back on February 17, 2010. The Palm rep said his company doesn't "know what the hold-up is" with getting Flash to Palm's platform. Here's a link to PreCentral's write-up.

App Price Cut - Half Price: Palm announced that the vast majority of webOS applications available via the device maker's App Catalog storefront are available at half off now through July 9. Good news for webOS developers is that they will earn their 70% based on the standard retail price.

More on Apps: World Cup - As we enter the next round of the FIFA World Cup, if you haven't done it yet, you might want to download an app or two to stay on top of the action.

"Using an accessory, like the $29 rubber bumper Apple sells to protect the iPhone, would also break your skin's conductivity and eliminate the problem. Apple has been pushing its bumper--essentially a $30 rubber band--pretty hard, which makes us wonder if the company's marketing strategy is a cover-up for a known reception issue."

I'm not sure what the point is of comparing the two. The Pre's only real advantage over the Evo is webOS. If compact size is important to you then you won't be interested in the Evo. If the size isn't a problem, the larger screen just kills the Pre. The physical keyboard is an advantage, but again only if that's really important to you. As tens of millions of iPhone owners have demonstrated, you can live without one just fine.

In pretty much every other way the Evo flat out spanks the Pre: expandable memory, 4G connection, 10x the available apps.

dk why their comparing a phone with year old tech to a phone that just came out weeks ago, oh wait perhaps the Pre isn't gettin "spanked" as you put it if its year old tech is what they feel is worthy of comparison....as for millions of iphonies, they bought for the simple fact that they get to say, "i'm really cool I have an iphone" that is a horrible carrrier with horrible tech that's why their phones reception six...the Evo flat out gets spanked, its wayyy oversized but it should fit in your man purse, the touchscreen keypad is annoying no one even has 4G but a handfull of cities and who cares about thousands of apps when only double digits are worth using...expendable memory, ha! Um...ever heard of wifi? Or bluetooth? You can "expand" your memory over the air and 800Mhz is pretty snappy...3rd quarter Pre2 then we'll have a fair comparison